Saturday, 18 February 2012

Let’s begin with something quite
disgusting. During my first winter in Madrid
I caught a cold. That’s not unusual, it’s normal to catch colds in winter and I
had had them before. What was new to me was that this was the first time I had
to visit a pharmacy and declare myself “constipado”, and that when I blew my
nose, (this is the disgusting part) what came down was black. Soot black.

I had been in Madrid for just a short time and this was
the first time in my life I had lived in a city and I knew that the stuff my
nose was ejecting was Madrid Pollution. At least it showed that my natural
filters were working. Now, after a lifetime of smoking cigarettes this
surprised me. How much stuff, far more than I suck in from my cancer sticks,
was I breathing in from the air of the city?

Speaking with a friend’s wife I remarked
that she would probably have no need for a tumble drier to dry her washing as
for most of the year hanging linen took almost no time at all to dry on the
line. Her reply was that if she hung clothes out where they lived, not far from
the city centre, because of the pollution in the atmosphere, they would
probably become dirtier than before that had gone into the washing machine.

I had read that Madrid is one of the world’s most polluted
cities, but thought nothing of it until I caught that cold, but I started to
wonder.

Then I got used to city life and thought
little about it. The authorities assured us that things were getting better.
The use of public transport that ran on natural gas rather than diesel or
gasoline were, according to them, bringing huge remissions in the level of
noxious gases in the air. The city have promoted, with dismal results, the
introduction of electric cars and planted lots of trees. They had sensors all
over the city and they wouldn’t lie to us, would they?

Except it is rumoured that the placing of the sensors was carefully
selected to produce the best results. A huge screen over the tourist office in Colon displays
colour-coded, red for bad, green for good, indications of the air quality. They
are invariably green!

And yet, according to World Health
Organisation, Madrid
has seen a constant growth of polluted air over the past twenty years.
Pharmacists say they have seen a steady rise in cases of asthma in the centre.

I am not surprised. Last month, when I
briefly left the city to report on the
church at Majorada del Campo, I stood on one of the towers and directed my
camera back to the city. The result is the photograph that heads this post. It
shows the city smothered in a black blanket of nastiness. While I was out there
breathing in that wonderful clean country air, my friends in the city were
breathing that in to their lungs. A news report on television that evening told
us that due to a combination of still air and a temperature inversion over the
city the atmosphere was officially dangerous. That the city has seen very
little rainfall recently hadn’t helped. Apparently the situation was to last
another day until winds rose to blow it away.

A few days later, the group Ecologists in
Action, presented some interesting findings and some damning criticism of Madrid’s plans to make
our city a nicer place to live. The figures showed increasing levels of
nitrogen dioxide and stuff called PM10, which is basically fine soot particles
that can be carried deep into the lungs where they cause inflammation and
worsening of heart and lung diseases. They often carry surface absorbed
carcinogenic compounds into the lungs. The nitrogen dioxide also irritates the
lungs and can lower resistance to colds and flu. Constant exposure can cause
acute respiratory illness in children.

I’m no expert, so I’m quoting medical
websites here. There’s also carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, hydrocarbons,
volatile organic compounds and something called “TOMPs”, or “Toxic Organic Micropollutants”.
These last two come from the un-burned residue of internal combustion engines.
There’s a long list of what happens when you breath them in. Suffice to say
none of them are pleasant.

So, the Ecologists in Action then took a
look at the remedies the Ayuntamiento had drawn up and found them lacking.
Among their suggestions was a need for more areas of the city where the
internal combustion engine is totally banned. To give Madrid
its due, much of the centre from Sol and Callao
to the royal palace do have that in place and electric buses do thread the
narrower lanes of the city.

They also suggested lowering the fares on
public transport.

Right now in Madrid this is a contentious issue. After
raising the fare of a single ticket by fifty percent last summer, (while giving
an eighty-percent reduction to the participants of the religion driven World
Youth Day for a week – shakes head and wonders who’s in charge of PR for the
city,) the metro is running a publicity campaign about how inexpensive it is
compared with other cities around the world. For instance, they point out that London is nearly four
times as expensive. The buses are just as cheap and they are all cheaper if you
buy a multi-trip or season ticket.

However, the posters proclaiming this value
for money have attracted graffitied scrawls comparing costs of living in those
countries. They point out that Spain
has some of the lowest wages in the western world, and that the cost of a metro
ticket as a percentage of an average income actually makes Madrid’s public transport expensive. And it
is actually more expensive than they think. Central government heavily
subsidises the city’s public transport. Realistic pricing of the metro and
buses would be a serious political mistake an lead to huge demands for wage
increases. With so much unemployment and low wages I see the graffistas point, but think it misguided and that they
should be happy with such a cheap means of getting around the city.

But the Ecologist want to see it cheaper
still to encourage commuters out of their cars and on to the trains and buses.
But they also want to limit the hours of using taxis. Gulp! Right now the only
way to get home after the last metro is by taxi. Ok, there are the “owl” buses
that circulate through the night, but they are not frequent and have limited
routes. So the solution is to run the metro 24 hours a day. Assuming there is
no maintenance on the track, of course.

The ecologists do have a couple of very
good ideas, though. One is for motorists to pay a charge for coming into the
centre: this has worked well in many places such as the London congestion charge. Apparently a
similar colour-coded scheme used in Mexico
City, which only allowed a limited number of vehicles
in each day, reduced pollution by twenty percent. They claim that
ninety-percent of cars coming into Madrid
only carry the driver. That the idea of car-pooling is unknown to Madrid commuters.
Passenger-less drivers, they say, should pay a surcharge. As a pedestrian I
agree with this. It might also make the roads safer for their other suggestion
which is to encourage more cycling. Barcelona have the “bicing” (pronounced
“beething”) scheme, which is a bicycle sharing program and last time I was
there seemed to be working well – in the downhill direction at least. Madrid does have some
cycle lanes, but in many places they have to be shared with the buses and
taxis, and a big bus looming over your rear wheel can be unsettling!

The Ayuntamiento has a plan outlining more
than seventy measures to combat pollution, but the ecologists deemed this a
“papel mojado”, a “wet paper”, which contained nothing which would limit the
amount of traffic in the city.

Visitors who come here in July and August
often comment on the lack of traffic on the streets, which produce hollow
laughs from us residents. If we do not wish to walk around in a cloud of toxic
waste we will have to change our ways. This will not be easy. Madrileños love
their cars, though I have to say I do know some who keep their vehicles garaged
and only use them when they escape the city. At other times they use public
transport, which is very good indeed.

But I can’t help remembering an evening
when I was complimented on a show of respect for not lighting up while enjoying
a coffee with a non-smoking friend. At the time we were sitting in a terrace
café situated on the central reservation of the calle de Juan Bravo. On both
sides of us traffic spewed out noxious exhaust fumes, which didn’t seem to
bother my friend one bit. But she was pleased I hadn’t lit a cigarette.

My name is Malte Zeeck, and I am with InterNations.org. I really enjoyed reading your fantastic blog! I think expats in Madrid and around the world could really gain some great insights [and have a few good laughs] on this page. The quality of the blog in general is very convincing, which is why I would love to feature you and your writing on the Recommended Blog on Madrid section on InterNations.org

Not only do we feature and link to your blog prominently; we also would like to hear from you directly in our questionnaire! We have also designed a link badge for your blog.

If you are interested, please feel free to contact me via email: maltezeeck@internations.org

wow - i really want to visit Madrid and I am excited to come across your blog. Although after hearing about all this pollution it does put me off a bit. It seems to be a common occurence nowadays. I went to Dubai around 12 years ago before it was booming and visited recently and it has completely changed from pristine sky to one of a smoky haze (unfortunately).